You are here:

More Reviews

On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. Along with his improbable name, untraceable accent, and unmistakable whiff of danger, Nero Golden has brought along his three adult sons. There is no mother, no wife. At least not until Vasilisa, a sleek Russian expat, snags the septuagenarian Nero, becoming the queen to his king --- a queen in want of an heir. Our guide to the Goldens’ world is their neighbor René, an ambitious young filmmaker. Researching a movie about the Goldens, he ingratiates himself into their household.

Jesse Stone, still reeling from the murder of his fiancée by crazed assassin Mr. Peepers, must keep his emotions in check long enough to get through the wedding day of his loyal protégé, Suitcase Simpson. The morning of the wedding, Jesse learns that a gala 75th birthday party is to be held for folk singer Terry Jester. Jester has spent the last 40 years in seclusion after the mysterious disappearance of the master recording tape of his magnum opus, The Hangman's Sonnet. That same morning, an elderly Paradise woman dies while her house is being ransacked. What are the thieves looking for? And what's the connection to Terry Jester and the mysterious missing tape?

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. Her human contact is limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. But when visa issues force the brothers to close up shop, they give Lois their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. Soon, she is providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria and is urged to take her product to the farmer’s market. When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. Then an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?

Drawn from over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with David Bowie, this oral history unfolds the story of a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. Tracing Bowie’s life from the English suburbs to London to New York to Los Angeles, Berlin and beyond, its collective voices describe a man profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry; an intuitive artist who could absorb influences through intense relationships and yet drop people cold when they were no longer of use; and a social creature equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra.

George and Lizzie have radically different understandings of what love and marriage should be. George grew up in a warm and loving family --- his father an orthodontist, his mother a stay-at-home mom --- while Lizzie grew up as the only child of two famous psychologists, who viewed her more as an in-house experiment than a child to love. Over the course of their marriage, nothing has changed --- George is happy; Lizzie remains…unfulfilled. When a shameful secret from Lizzie’s past resurfaces, she’ll need to face her fears in order to accept the true nature of the relationship she and George have built over a decade together.

When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young, the arty and the ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life's consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder. AT THE STRANGERS’ GATE builds a portrait of this particular moment in New York through the story of this couple's journey --- from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family.

Early on a gray November morning in 1941, only weeks after the German invasion, a small Ukrainian town is overrun by the SS. Penned in with his fellow Jews, under threat of deportation, Ephraim anxiously awaits word of his two sons, missing since daybreak. Come in search of her lover, to fetch him home again, away from the invaders, Yasia must confront new and harsh truths about those closest to her. Here to avoid a war he considers criminal, German engineer Otto Pohl is faced with an even greater crime unfolding behind the lines, and no one but himself to turn to. And in the midst of it all is Yankel, a boy determined to survive this. But to do so, he must throw in his lot with strangers.

On the eve of World War II, Egon Schneider --- a gallant and successful Jewish doctor, son of two world-famous naturalists --- escapes Germany to an uncertain future across the sea. Settling into the unfamiliar rhythms of upper Manhattan, he finds solace among a tight-knit group of fellow immigrants, tenacious men and women drawn together as much by their differences as by their memories of the world they left behind. They each suffer degradations and triumphs large and small, but their spirits remain unbroken. And when their little community is faced with an existential threat, these strangers rise up together in hopes of creating a permanent home.

The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama, but when human remains are discovered on an old farm, suspected to be that of Tommy Burke --- a former lover of two different inhabitants --- the village’s dark past begins to unravel. As the frustrated sergeant PJ Collins struggles to solve a genuine case for the first time in his life, he unearths a community’s worth of anger and resentments, secrets and regret.

We laugh when it pops up in our inbox: the scam letter promising a windfall. We wonder: How does anybody fall for these things? But it is no laughing matter. It is one of the biggest organized crime rackets in the world --- and State Department crisis manager Judd Ryker has fallen right into the middle of it. The disappearance of a young American in London sends Ryker into the heart of a corruption scandal in Nigeria, at the same time his CIA agent wife Jessica finds herself chasing a Russian master criminal known as the Bear. Unknown to either of them, they are pulling at two ends of the same lethal thread, a staggeringly vicious enterprise of piracy, extortion and murder.